In this paper, we discuss a part of participatory culture that so far has not received much attention in the academic world; it is the writing and reading of game fan fiction. The focus in this paper is on fan fiction, based on three different games that represent three different game genres: Tetris, StarCraft and Dreamfall: The Longest Journey. The aim is to advance our understanding of how pl...

Acknowledging the power of the id-drives, Freud held on to the authority of reason as the ego’s best tool to control instinctual desire. He thereby placed analytic reason at the foundation of his own ambivalent social theory, which, on the one hand, held utopian promise based upon psychoanalytic insight, and, on the other hand, despaired of reason’s capacity to control the self-destructive elem...

This paper is meant to be an introduction both to the short story Nebulous Mechanisms as well as the concept of science fiction prototypes. In the tradition of the legendary Isaac Asimov, we jump into the long and symbiotic history of science fact and science fiction. Briskly we move through current work in the field and delve into the particulars of the craft of combining current scientific re...

hrough the study of two models, the video games Metroid Prime 3 and Bioshock, the present article explores the relations between the game-play experience related to interactive fiction and the kind of narrative construction typical of two of the key science fiction genres: intergalactic conflict and the distopic city. By means of identifying two complementary dimensions that shape gaming experi...

In this article, we challenge the hegemony of western science fiction, arguing that western science fiction is particular even as it claims universality. Its view remains based on ideas of the future as forward time. In contrast, in non-western science fiction the future is seen outside linear terms: as cyclical or spiral, or in terms of ancestors. In addition, western science fiction has focus...

Making a theoretical case linking genre trajectory with artistic legitimation struggles, this paper seeks to explain the development of the American science fiction magazine. Across the fifty-plus years analyzed, science fiction emerged from its lowbrow pulp fiction origins into a highly successful, critically acclaimed genre across multiple mediums. This empirical trend is then modeled using p...